ANTIOCH — A petition by the leader of the city to change his name to honor the Mexican immigrants who raised him has been accepted by the Contra Costa Superior Court.
From now on, the Antioch mayor will go by the legal name Lamar Hernandez-Thorpe. Previously, it was Lamar Thorpe.
Judge Virginia M. George on Monday granted Hernandez-Thorpe the petition to change his name.
“Much of my success — if there’s any to be celebrated — is because of them,” Hernandez-Thorpe said in an interview.
According to spokesperson Sequoia Tohman, Hernandez-Thorpe was placed into foster care two days after his 1981 birth, because his birth mother was incarcerated and a heroin addict. He was raised by Mexican immigrants in East Los Angeles, and his two foster parents adopted four others and had two biological children, all of whom shared “Hernandez” as their last name.
The attempts by Hernandez-Thorpe’s foster parents to adopt him were unsuccessful, but the mayor said he wanted to honor them because they did “so much for this country,” fostering many children over the years.
Two days before his father, Guillermo Ochoa Hernandez, passed away from prostate cancer, Antioch’s mayor made a decision to change his last name in their honor. His mother, Teresa Hernandez, passed away in 2015 of Alzheimer’s disease, he said.
“I think they did the most honorable thing, they gave children who didn’t have the opportunity to be anything or have a family that opportunity,” Hernandez-Thorpe said. “And, so in my opinion, they gave more to this country than this country could have ever given to them. They won’t have statues of them. They won’t have plaques of them, but their son will wear their last name proudly.”
Hernandez-Thorpe was elected mayor of Antioch in 2020 and recently confirmed to this news organization that he intends to run for another term.
Source: www.mercurynews.com